


The Little Stone

by jenna_thorn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Strike Team Delta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 04:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3556241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“That’s kind of creepy.” He winced immediately after he said it.</p><p>“You don’t actually hear the words until they are in the air, do you?” She said from his lap, but matter of fact, mildly curious, neither giggly girl or Mata Hari, just the Natasha that sat in conference rooms and side-eyed his admittedly dubious taste in television and leisure reading. She rolled to sit upright. His spine didn’t work that way, and he’d feel jealous if he wasn’t still kicking himself.</p><p>“Sorry,” he muttered. “There were too many people in the room.”</p><p>“There always are.”</p><p>“Hey, <i>I</i> don’t do the thing.”</p><p>“Target on site,” she said and he rolled to the scope, his finger light on the trigger. A dog lifted its leg against the door. He sighed as he returned to his previous position facing her and she shrugged. “The thing,” she said and waved at him languidly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Stone

Clint shifted to stretch his shoulders and opened and closed his hands. He glanced to the side. “Can you not slouch?”

“I’m not slouching.”

“That’s what I mean. We’re at hour whatever –“

“Thirty one.”

… hour what _ever_ of sitting in a small box waiting for that door to open for someone other than a bodyguard’s nicfix, and you look like a princess on a throne with a pea under the cushion.”

“So you want me to look happy.”

“Hey, I know you’re still used to working on your own, but you can relax, we’re safe, well, relatively safe, I mean, we’re…”

She flopped her upper body across his legs and smiled brightly, her eyes ingénue wide. “Do you want me to perform happy like this?” She chewed gum that he knew she didn’t have and fluttered her fingers at him. “Or like this?” with a twitch she went from teen at a slumber party to seductress, curled up against his thighs, her eyes heavy with desire but this close he could see the shift. 

“That’s kind of creepy.” He winced immediately after he said it.

“You don’t actually hear the words until they are in the air, do you?” She said from his lap, but matter of fact, mildly curious, neither giggly girl or Mata Hari, just the Natasha that sat in conference rooms and side-eyed his admittedly dubious taste in television and leisure reading. She rolled to sit upright. His spine didn’t work that way, and he’d feel jealous if he weren't still kicking himself.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “There were too many people in the room.”

“There always are.”

“Hey, _I_ don’t do the thing.”

“Target on site,” she said and he rolled to the scope, his finger light on the trigger. A dog lifted its leg against the door. He sighed as he returned to his previous position facing her and she shrugged. “The thing,” she said and waved at him languidly.

“That’s different,” he said. “That’s profess…sion…al. Hunh. Yeah, okay, you got me.”

She nodded. “ _Happy_ enough for you now?” She sat upright, her face calm, in exactly the same way she had been, but somehow more so.

He sighed, fully aware that he’d fucked up. “Okay, you win. I don’t want you to show happy, _perform_ happy. I’m just …shit, I’d like you to _be_ happy.”

“You don’t control that, either.”

“Yeah, I got it.” He turned back to the scope, not only to avoid her raised eyebrow, just …mostly. If they didn’t get this guy today, she’d go back into the fishnets and micro mini and they’d get him tomorrow, or later today or whatever. Calendars stretched on ops. Or shrank. Minutes passed, then became hour twenty eight. “I don’t know that happy is the right word. Safe, maybe?”

“Why do you care? And if you even think about stray animals and responsib—“

“You aren’t a rescue, Natasha, but … you weren’t happy, and you weren’t safe, so you took the job with us and now you aren’t happy and you aren’t safe and…”

“You think I’ll leave SHIELD.”

“Hunh. Well, okay, I wasn’t thinking that, but thanks for putting it in my head. No, I just. I like SHIELD. I like Coulson, I like Fury … Okay, like isn’t the word I’m looking for there, either, hell no, but. … ah, forget it. You don’t have to be happy, okay?”

“For you.” 

“For anybody. I’m just the one sitting in the room with you for a week –“

“A day.”

“More than 24 hours means more than a day, and since there is no unit of time between day and week, I’m rounding up,” he retorted and she tilted her head to one side in concession of the point.

She curled one arm around a knee and looked professionally posed. “You aren’t as stupid as you pretend.”

“Yeah well, let’s keep that between us.” He looked back into the scope. It was probably pretty obvious he was avoiding her eye at this point, so why pretend.

“Why do you think I owe you happiness?”

“You don’t! If anything, I …” Despite what he’d said, he _could_ stop before blurting out the rest of that sentence. “You sound like Doc McCrary. You ever thought about therapy?” He snorted when she directed a decidedly smug smile at him. “No, not in the chair, you’d tie any therapist in knots and you know it. I mean about being … yeah, that’s creepy, too. No, never mind, don’t become a therapist, that’s …”

“Putting my training to use.” She said it so easily, and yet the hair on his neck lifted. SHIELD taught a class on Red Room techniques. It served two purposes: educating agents and marking the ones who didn’t balk at what had been done. They didn’t wash out; Fury had a use for everyone, including sociopaths, but Clint side-eyed the hell out of the ones he knew about.

“Can I have a time machine and a couple of blocks of C4?”

“Set it for 1938 and you could destroy the Red Room with your favorite handgun and two magazines.”

“Nineteen to twenty seven people, eh? In the beginning.”

She shrugged. “It wouldn’t work anyway.”

“C4 works. Works just fine.” He drawled out the vowel and won an eyeroll. “Okay, I’ll bite, why not, Marty McFly?”

“Sixty years later, you’d still be sitting outside a night club door, with someone else who can wear a short skirt and plant surveillance devices, waiting for a target.”

“Nobody can wear that skirt like you, Princess.” That got him a royally tilted chin, and he figured that was the best he was going to get. 

They sat in silent stillness, then in silenced motion, as Clint saw movement at the door, took the shot and broke down the modified rifle while Natasha triggered the tracking system and swept the room. They reached the door at the same time, and she cleared the locking mechanism while he grabbed his backpack and her tote. As they exited the building, she leaned into him and he shifted her bag to sling his hand around her waist, honeymooners or tourists or students on world tour, wholly unremarkable with his camera and a fancy tripod for display to customs, and her tote with flowers on the outside and many pockets on the inside, most of which were visible. 

In an hour, they’d reached the contact point; in two, they were sitting in the back of a stripped out utility van and Clint realized that once again, he was stretched out on his stomach and she was sitting, legs curled and arms on her knee, beside him. He rolled over and scratched his belly. “I’m thinking of cupcakes.”

“I’m thinking of a shower with very hot water,” she said.

“Whatever floats your boat, I guess.” He fluttered one hand in the air and she reached out to hold his wrist, her thumb against his pulsepoint. He froze, then slowly dropped his hand back to his stomach, letting her follow, his elbow next to, but not pressing into, her thigh. They sat for a moment, swaying gently to the rocking of a commercial suspension over semi-paved roads, silent and not holding hands, exactly. His left wrist, where she held it, was just a little warmer than his right. His ass, against the bare metal of the stripped van, was reminding him that this part of the world still had snow on the ground. 

“A cupcake might be nice, though,” she said, and he didn’t let himself smile, but he knew she saw it anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Emily Dickinson's How Happy is the Little Stone.


End file.
